Whither Twitter?

Marios Alexandrou seems like one of the few search pundits that hasn't jumped on the Twitter bandwagon. And while he acknowledges that his industry counterparts have promoted (and sometimes proven) Twitter as an essential social media marketing tool. "I find myself more and more inclined to shut down Twhirl and move on," Alexandrou says.

First, he argues that most of the Tweets people send are not valuable to the community (of followers). "I'm not saying that there has to be a money-making idea in every message, but a message to your network should at least be of value/interest to more than one person," Alexandrou says.

Alexandrou also notes that some of the most popular Twitterers now have hundreds of followers--which makes it quite difficult to have real, two-way conversations with more than a handful of people. And the people they end up conversing with tend to be friends or colleagues that they had a connection with, pre-Twitter.